Cook Local, Eat Global

Shrimp Empress is a delicately flavored coconut milk curry of my own invention which I devised as a light yet rich dinner special while I worked as a chef. It is effervescent in flavor, seasoned with mostly sweet spices, but it is rich with the unctuous texture of coconut milk paired with sweet, slippery mango chunks. Barely cooked shrimp with its tender pink flesh is paired with velvety blanched baby spinach, and the tender-crisp snap and translucent pale violet color of red onion slices.

It is a very, very pretty dish, with a balance of fresh, springtime tints: delicate turmeric yellow, verdant cilantro, roseate chilies, gleaming white basmati rice, deep emerald spinach, and sunrise orange mango. The fragrance of it matches the colors perfectly: cardamom, cinnamon, cloves, fennel and black pepper dance together in a joyful chorale of scent, while cilantro, ginger, and lemon juice add a fresh, floral note to the melange of aromas.

In order to preserve the fresh colors and flavors of the baby spinach and shrimp, I cooked them separately from the curry sauce. This means you could make the sauce a day or so before you want to serve it, and keep it in the refrigerator where the aromas and flavors of the spices will meld together, only becoming better for having had time to get to know each other better. If I were going to do that, I would cook the curry sauce without the mango and red onion, and only add those as the curry sauce is heated up for service.

In this way, you could make a splendid and complicated looking dish for a dinner party, and not have to work yourself to death on the entree on the day of the party.

Let me admonish you to get the nicest, freshest-tasting shrimp you can manage in order to make this dish. I would highly suggest you go to a seafood specialist whom you trust and only buy truly fresh shrimp, or ones which are still frozen. Wild-caught shrimp taste better than farmed, so get those if you can afford them. I did this dish with very large shrimp, arranged on top of the curry in a radial spinning wheel formation, but you could also use smaller ones just as effectively. You can use frozen mango for this curry, although I prefer slightly under ripe fresh mango for its superior texture and balanced, lightly-tart, mostly sweet flavor.

Whatever you do, please don’t use canned mango for this curry! It would ruin the effect. If canned mango is all you can find, just leave the mango out.

The world will not end if you have no mango in your curry.

But, it might end if you use canned mango in your curry. (I don’t know whether it will end or not, I am just saying it might. I have never wished to test this hypothesis by putting canned mango in my curry, but if you feel as if you can gamble with the continued existence of all humanity, then by all means dump that canned mango in…you are a braver soul than I.)

Oh, and one more thing–I don’t dare ever make this curry again for myself–it turns out that my allergist is nearly certain that I am allergic to shrimp, and probably clams and most likely other seafood as well.

So, I wanted to share this recipe with the rest of the world, even if I never get to eat it again!

Heat canola oil in a heavy-bottomed pot and add sliced onions and sprinkle with the teaspoon salt. Cook, stirring, until the onions are golden brown. Add the ginger and garlic and spices, and continue cooking until the onions are deep golden brown. Add coconut milk, and if you want to use them, the whole, stemmed Thai chilies. Bring to a simmer, and add the mangoes and red onions. Simmer for about ten minutes. Taste curry sauce for salt, add what is necessary, and stir in lemon juice.

Boil water in a large pot while the curry sauce cooks. Drop shrimp in and cook until they are just done–allow them to turn from translucent blueish grey-white to solid white and pink, with red-shelled tails.

Just before serving, drop the spinach into the curry sauce. You can either add the shrimp to the curry sauce or make a mound of rice in the center of a shallow pasta bowl, then ladle curry sauce around it and arrange the shrimp over the rice and sauce.

Kim–I am really sad about the shrimp, clams and especially crab. But you are right–I can still eat tons of other good stuff, so I don’t dwell on it.

Christy–it was really great with the shrimp–I devised the sauce specifically for shrimp. Texturally, the velvety spinach, soft, sweet mango and tender-crisp red onion go with that snappy tenderness of shrimp perfectly.

BUT–the truth is it would be great with either chicken or paneer cheese, too. Just not as great!

But, you are right–I can make substitutions and thus taste it again, though I wanted to share the original recipe so that those who can eat shrimp could eat it as I conceived it and taste the joy that I meant for diners to experience in eating it.

Mae Ploy is very thick and creamy and comes in a larger can–it doesn’t come in smaller cans.

For this recipe, I find if I use all Mae Ploy the sauce becomes too rich. If I mix it with the thinner Chao Koh in a smaller can, it comes out perfectly, with no waste, and without a watered down flavor which would come from simply adding water to the Mae Ploy brand.